


Ten Years Gone

by Defira



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: Abusive Relationship, Blood Magic, Canon-Typical Violence, Doomed Relationship, Elves, F/M, Non-Graphic Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-24
Updated: 2013-01-24
Packaged: 2017-11-26 17:55:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/652894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Defira/pseuds/Defira
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A brief drabble sitting in my head that I decided to write for Dragon Age Fan Week: Minor Characters. Based on a prompt given to me several centuries ago by Flutiebear. Minor spoilers for Dragon Age 2: Act 3</p>
<p>Nyssa lost her husband to the Gallows ten years ago. It still feels like yesterday.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ten Years Gone

_“Where is your husband?”_

Oh, it still stung.

It was a question she was used to, even if this particular time it was asked with different intent. She was still asked regularly, when people realised she was not some simpering old maid left upon the shelf- well then, where is your husband?

And it hurt. 

The first year had been the worst, the horrible aching hole his absence left in her heart robbing her of sleep, leaving a fierce pain in her chest that left her bedridden on the worst days. She went to the Gallows on her good days and begged to see him, begged for word; after a time, the templars stopped allowing her into the courtyard.

After a few weeks more, they didn’t even let her board the ferry.

She was a widow in all but name, denied the justice of closure, denied the joy of being a wife, and deprived of her best friend and lover.

_Where is your husband?_

A question with so many answers, so many assumptions- there were the well-wishers that assumed him dead, who saw the cheap ring on her finger and the lines of grief around her eyes and offered her condolences for a man she had never buried. There were the snide and the cruel, those who asked of other women, other commitments, suggesting his love had been fleeting and his feet had grown cold. 

There were those, _men_ , who saw the ring on her finger as a challenge and a lie. With no husband to be seen, surely it was just because she was playing hard to get? Where was her husband, if he wasn’t there to fight off grasping hands in the market, and unwanted attention in the night? There was no husband- only a memory of gentler times, and a sudden desire to avoid leaving the house after dark. 

And there were those who knew the truth, the neighbours who had stood and gawked as the templars had dragged him away in chains while she screeched and begged and clawed. They who helped her to merely survive in the black and wretched days after his imprisonment, who offered her sympathy but eyed her with fear and caution in the days after. She and Huon had been near inseparable since childhood, and she had kept his secret well. What other secrets might she be hiding, they wagered?

_Where is your husband?_

With every year that passed, it hurt a little less, but the ache never lifted. She never slept on his side of the bed, but life went on. She let her sister and her children move into the front room- she had no need for three whole rooms when she was alone, and they brought a measure of life back to her heart. She learned to smile again, and she learned that there were things worth enjoying that filled the hours of the day. 

And she kept the cheap ring on her finger, because despite the years and despite the pain she still loved him. She had no husband, and she had no chance for children, and she had so little hope most days- just a love long since gone cold, love that did not warm the bed at night or kiss away her nightmares. 

It had been ten years, and when she opened the door in the early hours of the morning it was not her husband standing on the other side. He looked like her Huon, in ways, but his hair was thin and lank, his skin was sallow, and his eyes were wild and suspicious. He had hugged her tightly, and she had held him, too stunned to do anything else. His fingers were like claws in her back, his hand tight as a vice around her wrist as he whispered desperately to her, promising her an escape, promising her a new beginning. 

The templars had denied her closure, and had offered her the greatest and final insult- the man who had returned to her was not her Huon. She had no death to grieve, no body to lay to rest, and yet her Huon was most definitely dead. 

And when the Champion came to her, her face offering sympathy and pity, Nyssa swallowed her shame and her guilt and in stilted whispers told her what she knew. The man whose hand had left a mark on her arm for hours afterwards was not her Huon, she promised herself, so she was not betraying her husband in this act. 

“Where is your husband?” the Champion asked.

“Not here,” she whispered, “but he is coming for me.”

She didn’t know why she waited up; she jumped at every sound, every creek of the Vhenadahl in the wind, every slamming door in the distance. She couldn’t rightly say why she felt the need to go outside in the middle of the night, just as she’d sworn not to do any more. 

She left her ring in the house, by her marriage bed. 

And when she heard his laboured breathing behind her, she felt her heart break just a little. “Huon?” she whispered, turning to meet him. 

The man behind her was not her husband. 

And when people asked her a thousand times over where her husband was, she realised in that moment that the most honest answer, the most painful answer was…

… that her husband was dead. And had been for ten years.

It was her last thought.


End file.
